There's a new strain of ransomware being deployed with increasing frequency.  Believe it or not, it's even more dangerous than the strains we've seen in recent months.

Unlike other types of ransomware, this one not only encrypts your files and demands payment (which is bad enough) but it also attempts to steal your credit card information via a PayPal phishing page included in the code.

Recent Windows 10 updates have been giving the company's user base heartburn lately, with their tendency to delete files and cause at least as many problems as they solve.  If you're among the frustrated ranks, good news is on the horizon.

The company is currently readying an update that will allow you to pause the update function so that they no longer occur automatically.

Recently, Marriott Hotels informed the world that they had been the victims of a massive data breach.  As it turns out, the breach was even more serious than was initially reported.

As the company has learned more from the ongoing investigation into the matter, they've been doing an admirable job at keeping the public updated, even if the details are cringe-worthy.

There's a new side channel attack to worry about. This one is after the target system's OS page cache, where a variety of sensitive data that has been accessed by the device's owner is stored for rapid retrieval.  Perhaps the worst and most ominous aspect of this newly identified threat is the fact that it's not limited by hardware architecture, and has been found to work on both Window and Linux-based machines.

One of the exciting new features offered by the latest smartphones is facial recognition, which allows users to unlock their devices simply by looking at them.  On paper, it's a great feature and incredibly convenient, but there's a problem. The issue was uncovered by a non-profit group called the Dutch Consumentenbond, which tested more than a hundred smartphones offered by a broad spectrum of vendors.

Two new critical flaws have been discovered in Adobe Acrobat and Reader that require your urgent attention.

In fact, the flaws were rated as so severe that the company broke with its tradition of releasing security updates around the middle of the month in coordination with Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday".

They released an update sooner this time, in order to make sure that these issues were resolved, and ensure the fixes were in the hands of their users.

Google has been busy in recent weeks.  They've removed a staggering 85 apps from their Play Store when they discovered that they were pushing highly aggressive adware to the users who downloaded them.

The apps the company removed were wearing a number of disguises, passing themselves off as everything from games, to remote control simulators, to streaming video services, and more.

Google is taking additional steps to protect its Chromebook user base.  Currently, if a hacker has physical access to your machine, he or she could insert a flash drive in the USB port and run malicious code from it.

The company is adding a new feature called USBGuard, which blocks USB port access any time the machine's screen is locked.

Chromebooks are fun, cool machines that are incredibly popular with students, hipsters, artists, and the like. However, the company hasn't been able to penetrate the Enterprise market with their product.  It's not hard to understand why.

Overwhelmingly, businesses use Windows-based machines.

2018 hasn't been a great year for social media, with all the major platforms suffering a number of significant data breaches at various points in the year.  Twitter alone has seen several, including the biggest one in May when the company urged all of its 330 million users to reset their passwords.